An analysis of hurricanes as heat engines has inspired the invention of this application. A basic understanding of the thermodynamics of hurricanes will also help in understanding my open cycle latent heat engine, which simulates the action of a hurricane within a confinement designed for that purpose.
The energy inputs to a hurricane include trade winds blowing over the water, and sunlight warming the water and the air above it, and evaporating water vapor from the ocean into the atmosphere. When the right conditions for a hurricane occur, the winds begin swirling moist air around a low pressure center forming the eye of the hurricane. The moist and swirling air rises around the eye wall of the hurricane and fans outward at the top of the hurricane. This condenses water vapor to form rain, leaving the air at the upper regions of the hurricane in a drier state. Some of this air is cut off and blown away from the hurricane by high altitude winds, and some of it settles into the eye of the hurricane, where it descends gravitationally. The adiabatic compression of the dry air in the eye of the hurricane forms at sea level a dry air at a substantially lower pressure than the moist air surrounding the hurricane eye. Evaporation of sea water at the bottom of the eye saturates the dry air as it drops to lower altitudes. This adds power to the swirling winds at the throat of the hurricane to drive the moist air inward in an ascending spiral, producing more rain as the water vapor condenses, and keeping the hurricane alive.
My open cycle latent heat engine takes advantage of some of the phenomena at work in a hurricane. It uses adiabatically expanding and rising moist air and adiabatically compressing and descending dry air to form an air flow cycle similar to the one at work in a hurricane. For the swirling winds at the throat of the hurricane, it substitutes an ejector drawing in sea level air, with the assistance of the gravitationally compressed, low pressure dry air. Once an air flow cycle is established, the flow can be directed through a turbo generator to extract energy from the engine.
My open cycle latent heat engine is intended to exploit naturally occurring phenomena such as the tendency of a column of low density, moist air to expand adiabatically and rise, and the subatmospheric sea level pressure produced by a column of gravitationally descending and adiabatically compressed dry air. Once the basic principles of operation of my open cycle latent heat engine are understood, there are many ways it can be put to use for producing energy and for moving large quantities of air.